Designing Gradient Dot Patterns with Illustrator

Author

Released

2/11/2014

Join Deke McClelland, as he shows you how to make a custom gradient dot pattern with Adobe Illustrator. He begins by showing you how to load, apply, and scale the preset patterns that ship with Illustrator, and then demonstrates how to make your own gradient patterns with round and square dots. Last, he shows how to infuse your designs with energy using dynamic rotations that make your own specialized pattern wave.

Topics include:

Using Illustrator's preset gradient dot patterns

Creating a pattern of custom halftone dots

Filling editable text with a dot pattern

Turning circular dots into squares

Using dynamic rotations to create specialized patterns

Skill Level Intermediate

1h 19m

Duration

36,056

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- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland.Welcome to my new series, Designs Deconstructed,in which we take a look at exciting graphic designs,and we figure out how to make them.Now in this course, I'm gonna show you howto create custom gradient dot patterns in Illustrator.Now at first blush, that might not sound all that exciting,but it is, let me explain.I was talking to my buddy, and fellow Lynda.com author,David Blatner, the other day,I almost called him Gradient Blatner,and he, he does a lot of end design stuff for Lynda.com,and he was telling me how he loves nothing morethan to wake up really bright and early in the morning,before the kids are up, and hand coat him some gradientdot patterns in the post script printing language,which officially makes David the biggestdesign geek on the face of the planet, but they are cool.

Here, let me show you.We've got this round dot, gradient dot pattern here,that's angled as well, and we've got this squaregradient dot pattern at an angle,and there's a bunch of them, in all he's got 30 of them,that are available for free in 10 sets,no three sets of 10, at CreativePro.com.So you'll wanna check those outbecause they're all PDF files,that you can open and edit inside of Illustrator,so very cool stuff, but it got me thinking,"You know, I bet you can do a lot of that,"and much more inside of Illustrator without"resorting to hand coating post script."So in four chapters, here's what's going to happen.

In the first chapter, I'm gonna show you how towork with the gradient dot patterns that actuallyship along with Illustrator, including this undulatinggradient dot pattern right here,that kind of throbs in and out.And then in the second chapter,I'm gonna show you how to create your own customgradient dot pattern with round dots that fade,kind of to square dots there in the center, at 50%,and then back to round, and just by way of example,we'll fill some text exactly precisely with that pattern.And then in the third chapter,I'll show you how to create a square gradient dot pattern,like this one here.

And then of course, we'll fill some text with that pattern,and then in the fourth chapter,we're gonna make that pattern wave.Notice how the squares are automatically,by the way this is all automated,automatically rotating across the course of the gradient,and of course, we'll go ahead andfill some text with that pattern as well.Here, in just 15 action packed movies.Let me show you exactly how it works.